A legendary piece of 20th-century art and literary history, André Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, an attempt to define "once and for all" the nature of surrealism, which instead provoked decades of argument, is on display in London ahead of an auction in Paris.

The document is Breton's 21-page hand-written manuscript of a text championing dreams, madness and the force of the human imagination over logic, reason and artistic rules - which was also his attempt to seize back control of the artistic movement from rival dreamers.

It was written at the flat in the Rue Fontaine in Paris shared with his first wife (of three), the artist Simone Collinet, which became the centre of the surrealist movement, a showcase for his work and a meeting point, debating club and workshop for its followers. Famous experiments were conducted there in "automatic writing" where the pen was simply allowed to travel apparently undirected across the paper, and in pictures and poems constructed by chopping up texts and images and collaging them back together into new and startling forms.

Collinet kept the manifesto and other Breton manuscripts, which are now being sold by her heirs at a Sotheby's auction in Paris in May. The manifesto alone is estimated at 500,000 euros (£372,000), and the manuscripts of the automatic writing texts - published and heavily edited despite the claim of the untrammeled spirit, under the title "Poisson Soluble" (Soluble Fish) - at up to 80,000 euros (£59,000) each. The manifesto was originally intended as a short introduction to Soluble Fish, but grew into a major statement in its own right.

The manifesto was immediately recognised as a landmark intellectual statement, though like James Joyce's Ulysses, which shares surrealist traits including the famous stream of consciousness final passage, it has probably more often been cited as an authority than read in full.

It is the only surviving original copy, and has only been exhibited once before, in a major surrealist exhibition in Paris in 2002.

Breton died in 1968, and there was a public outcry by French intellectuals four years ago when the flat, which had been preserved with all its original contents, including works of art by Joan Miró and René Magritte, was scattered at auction instead of preserved by the state as a museum. The sale was picketed by protesters who distributed fake 10-euro notes, reading "your money stinks of the corpse of the poet that you never dared to become."

"This is an extraordinary piece of literary history, unquestionably one of the major artistic statements of the century", Thomas Bompard, an expert on books and manuscripts at Sotheby's in Paris, said. "Before it the surrealists were regarded as very happening people, interesting noisy people to invite to a party but not serious, more revolutionary people than revolutionary writers. With the manifesto all this changed - and it is also a beautiful piece of writing itself."

The manuscript and Soluble Fish, along with a selection of surrealist works of art also coming up for auction, is on display at Sotheby's in London until February 4 2008.